Tuesday, 20 December 2011

The collapse of the Soviet Union: What the US knew and when it knew it

By Patricia H. Kushlis

Kudos to the Foreign Service Journal for “When the USSR Fell: The Foreign Service on the Front Lines,” a special section of articles by several US government officials from longtime US-Russia specialist and Ambassador to the Soviet Union Jack Matlock to Embassy Moscow Political Officer Thomas Graham. These individuals really did know what US government officials knew about the Soviet Union’s impending collapse and when they knew it.

As FSJ Associate Editor Shawn Dorman points out in his introduction to this special section:

“Conventional wisdom has it that the United States was caught off guard by the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. “No one saw it coming” is a common refrain. But it is false.”

One FSJ account after another supports Dorman’s observation. Yet “The Excerpt from the Abyss Cable,” a cable drafted by Minister Counselor for Political Affairs Raymond F. Smith, transmitted to Washington on July 13, 1990 and subsequently declassified by the State Department entitled: “Looking into the Abyss – the Possible Collapse of the Soviet Union and What We Should be Doing About It” (p. 37) is perhaps the strongest refutation of “the conventional wisdom” that I’ve read.

Smith’s “Abyss Cable,” by the way, would not have appeared on Wikileaks – it had been classified SECRET/Exdis – a far more restrictive classification to which the Wikileaks leaker would not have had access.

Aron began that article entitled “Everything you Think You Know about the Collapse of the Soviet Is Wrong” by claiming that “in the years leading up to 1991, virtually no western expert, scholar, official or politician foresaw the collapse of the Soviet Union. . . "

FP, which wisely advises prospective authors that it fact-checks, obviously hadn’t done enough in Aron’s case. Maybe it was the summer help – it was July after all. Or maybe the editorial staff simply failed to do its job. Or maybe it’s because AEI and its neoconservative stable of so called foreign policy experts are highly effective at promoting their own views - whether accurate or not.

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The collapse of the Soviet Union: What the US knew and when it knew it

By Patricia H. Kushlis

Kudos to the Foreign Service Journal for “When the USSR Fell: The Foreign Service on the Front Lines,” a special section of articles by several US government officials from longtime US-Russia specialist and Ambassador to the Soviet Union Jack Matlock to Embassy Moscow Political Officer Thomas Graham. These individuals really did know what US government officials knew about the Soviet Union’s impending collapse and when they knew it.

As FSJ Associate Editor Shawn Dorman points out in his introduction to this special section:

“Conventional wisdom has it that the United States was caught off guard by the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. “No one saw it coming” is a common refrain. But it is false.”

One FSJ account after another supports Dorman’s observation. Yet “The Excerpt from the Abyss Cable,” a cable drafted by Minister Counselor for Political Affairs Raymond F. Smith, transmitted to Washington on July 13, 1990 and subsequently declassified by the State Department entitled: “Looking into the Abyss – the Possible Collapse of the Soviet Union and What We Should be Doing About It” (p. 37) is perhaps the strongest refutation of “the conventional wisdom” that I’ve read.

Smith’s “Abyss Cable,” by the way, would not have appeared on Wikileaks – it had been classified SECRET/Exdis – a far more restrictive classification to which the Wikileaks leaker would not have had access.

Aron began that article entitled “Everything you Think You Know about the Collapse of the Soviet Is Wrong” by claiming that “in the years leading up to 1991, virtually no western expert, scholar, official or politician foresaw the collapse of the Soviet Union. . . "

FP, which wisely advises prospective authors that it fact-checks, obviously hadn’t done enough in Aron’s case. Maybe it was the summer help – it was July after all. Or maybe the editorial staff simply failed to do its job. Or maybe it’s because AEI and its neoconservative stable of so called foreign policy experts are highly effective at promoting their own views - whether accurate or not.